


Turkish Delight

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Historical, History, Humor, Not Beta Read, Romance, Sexy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with bicycles in Amsterdam and ended with hunting parties in Constantinople. Surus was there, the mean guys were there, too many Sultans were there and River wished she could finish what she began.</p><p>A casual date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turkish Delight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrinneyFriday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrinneyFriday/gifts).



> Very late and under re-read, for Pam's birthday, fluff and dates.

“Doctor!” River hallooed across the square, astride a red bicycle, hair conveniently blowing in her face and blinding her as she was supposed to keep watch. She tucked the curls between her ears, as best as she could. The Doctor’s head popped out from behind a low wall, between a rotten bin and a street sign, ivies and Dutch façade completing the picture. His head disappeared again behind the wall and River heaved a sigh.

“River, wait a second,“ he merely answered, as he came round the corner, leading by the hand a dotted bicycle, at which River rolled her eyes. He set the vehicle against the wall, stood before, hands on hips and did not budge, studious.

“Don’t tell me you can’t ride a bike. “ River’s fingers were drumming on the handlebar. She let out a small snort and propelled herself in his direction, casting quick glances behind her.

“Don’t be silly, I can ride a bike,” the Doctor huffed dismissively. “I have two legs, two arms, a centre of gravity fairly similar to that of humans, I have seen it done.”

Saying so, he was chaotically roaming the air with his arms and legs as if riding a bike involved a process as complex as the butterfly stroke. River’s incredulous stare prompted him to curb his flowing movements. His arms gently fell long his body and he was left with a blinking expression of mischief on the face.

“Of course, I can,” he said, playfully rogue.

River circled round him before heading back to the corner of the square. Her eyes were fleeing, always coming back to a point up the paved street. From her observation point she could see the end of the cycling parade, tourists and locals blending in a chips-scented hue, the famous Amsterdam view of façades looking over the canal in the background.

“Sweetie…” she warned.

“I said wait.” He lifted a hand, still studying the device before him. As she turned her head to him, he dropped to his knees and started fiddling with the chain and drive. “I just need to understand how that…”

“We don’t have time!” She gnarled. “They’re closing in on us. Contrary to popular belief, and even in a Carnival parade, a bowtie and a suit cannot go unnoticed.”

Each manipulation was eliciting minute clicks from the bike, startling River from time to time. The Doctor, noticing her edginess, cheekily rang the bell and River shot him a deadly glance before going back to her watch of the street.

“If we hurry and join the cycling party, we might blend in the parade.” She stated, summoning her calmer self. “But you have to get on the damn bike first.”

A screw took off in a clutter of metal and the Doctor dove sideways to retrieve it, a sheepish expression on the face. River stifled a laugh, trying very hard to avoid looking at him.

“River, don’t be ridiculous.” Another resounding clank tested River’s patience and she briefly closed her eyes. “I’m not riding a vehicle I don’t fully understand.”

River’s head snapped back at him.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she tartly replied.  She stood, wide-eyed, arms folded on her chest, balancing the bicycle between her thighs.

“I’m really not. I might have at some point in my life been on a bike. Hang on, not exactly; it was a pedal-copter. One of my better works, I think. Sad ending though. Only I can’t remember it now. I guess it’s like flying, it comes back easily.”

“Hardly.” River shook her head, still watching the street above. “Have you seen the way you fly your ship?”

“Oi! Rude.” The Doctor’s head shot up, a strand of hair standing fiercely atop. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at her and she granted him a dubious look.

“Shut up. No time for cracks,” he carolled and dove back before the drive, probing and sonicking random parts of the bike. “I think I know how it’s working.”

“I really hope you do,” River breathed. ”It’s hardly quantum physics.”

“It happens to be my light reading of the morning.” The bike started emitting an odd, vibrating sound and River bit her lip. ”Please don’t insult my intelligence.”

“I’m not,” River conceded lightly. She bent across the handlebar to get a better look at the other end of the street before turning back to the Doctor and smiling genuinely. “I’m simply questioning your maturity. This morning you were reading the comic strip at the back of the Froot Loops packet and could not even finish it.”

The Doctor was still working on whatever he was working on, back to her, shrugging and nodding at the bike.

“I was most intrigued by the way Toucan Sam was trying to explain how a plane flies. Humans truly underestimate their little ones’ intellect.”

“Little ones.” River rolled her eyes. “Sweetie, you have to admit you lack maturity, a little, and common sense, a lot. Would I let you, you could ride this upside down. Seriously, what is so hard about grabbing the handlebar and putting your arse on the saddle?”

The Doctor mushed his hair and bounced up to his feet. Indeed he grabbed the handlebar and saddled the bike, but contrary to River’s expectations of horizontal movements, jumped in the air with a shriek. 

“Ouch. Riding it upside down might not be such a bad idea.” He moaned, an eye on River’s baffled expression.  “I was not expecting the seat to be so uncomfortable,” he explained, rubbing his lower back.  “I think I just crushed my…”

“Oh! Never mind that,” River stopped him, suddenly tensed on the bike.  From the other end of the street, a commotion focused her attention.

“Well, that’s something new,“ the Doctor deadpanned. “You’re generally far more concerned about the well-being of that part…” River shushed him and he pouted. “What?”

“Mean guys.” She stared at the other end of the street where a group of armed soldiers had appeared, muscles taut, before joining the Doctor’s spot with a few pedal strokes. ”At the corner of the street. They just entered the flower shop. We’d better go.”

“Really? They are thick. Why would we visit the flower shop when we are being pursued?”

“Never complain about the enemy’s bouts of stupidity, Sweetie,” River pointed out. “Are you pressing the pedal yet?” The Doctor was squirming on the seat, oddly balancing his limbs above the ground, not moving an inch from his spot. “No, you do not need to stay in balance before starting to pedal. Have you really no recollection of being on a bike?”

He nodded in response and she grimaced, half-annoyed, half-charmed by his absentmindedness.

“If you cannot ride, just hop at the back of mine. It’ll be fine,” she offered with a gesture to the back of her bicycle.

Ignorant of her proposition, his legs seemed to perform a snake dance in the air, one after the other, to find to the pedals. He began falling to the right, then the left, before River took hold of his left forearm and stilled him. Grounded at last, he shot her a beguiling smile and reported his attention to the pedals.

“I tell you I can work it. It just needs to… “He pushed the right pedal, almost toppling River in the process. “Ah! The legs still have it. Good legs. I knew keeping two of them was a good idea.”

He tried patting his knee while pedalling, yet only managed to nearly crash into the nearest door. River, who had caught up with him, tugged at his shirt, nodding towards the street intended as their escape route, a narrow bowel decked with flowers and strollers.

“Well, fasten your seatbelts, Fausto.” River took the lead, looking back at him with a furrow on the brink of peevishness when he did not follow her immediately. The Doctor seemed to still for a moment, his hands going for the handle of the sonic in his jacket. “Come on, the cycling party is out of sight,” she cried out.

Before turning back, she witnessed for a split second a manic glint in his eye. She did a double take, suddenly worried but only heard him howling “Geronimo!” before he zoomed in a flash before her, with a crackle and a whooping sound. The Doctor had lifted his feet to the handle bar, while the bicycle drive was spinning madly on its own, sonic helping. The bike leapt forward, far ahead, and shot in the street through stunned pedestrians, in the trail of the parade, before disappearing at the corner.

A group of armed guards, in dark uniforms dashed out of a butcher’s shop, all guns drawn, and began running after him. River stood, astride her bicycle, hands still on the handlebar, gawking.

 

That’s the moment when a bellicose elephant dashed in the street, another Doctor playing the pipe on his back.

Used to such multiple interventions of the Doctor in the same place, she bit back the chain of swearing words she was prepared to throw at his fast escaping form and started riding behind him.

And that’s the moment when a river of rats flooded the streets. Driving people up the walls, down the canals, River to the nearest landing.

“Dear God, I ought to confiscate that tool.”

 

***

 

River found him waiting for her, by the bank, feet dangling above the water. He was looking flushed, hair in disarray, childishly proud of himself. She carelessly let go of her bike besides his, hoping the racket would convey if only a quarter of her rage. She would never admit she had feared for his safety, merely because she always was worried about that. But the fear of losing sight of him completely, of letting go of him, never to stumble on him before decades, was a treacherous side effect of their timelines. He could disappear, minutes for him, centuries for her, and expect her to pick up where they had left their adventures. Intimacy in abeyance, domestic life on hold; it had happened before.

“Are you _completely_ out of your mind?” She bent to his ear, breathing in his post-excitement scent, and, still, her perfume. Relief flushed her mind clean. For him, it had been an hour at the most since he had saddled the bike in the little square. No lives in-between. She allowed herself to relax and slid by his side, with a low, contented grunt. Rested on his nape, her hand started massaging. Eyes hooded, he watched her in silence, tranquil, before shifting forward. 

“Well, we escaped them, didn’t we?” His voice croaked, used. He had run the streets and the zoos and the spaces to be on time. Right then, on the river bank, to catch her.

“Only because you created such havoc, we’ll probably be banned for two life times.” Her fingers began twisting the short hair, raking backwards and he moaned approvingly. “Sweetie, you drove half the parade…”

“ _And_ the mean guys,” he countered, eager, looking at her askance.

“ _And_ the mean guys,” she granted him, with a nod, and took on a sterner tone. “In the _canal_.”

“They’re fine,” he bellowed. He got up to his feet, dramatically, her deprived hand hovering in mid-air. For good measure, he reached out a hand with a flounce and invited her to join him. She scrambled to get up, looking around for any remainder of the angry mob or hunting party. He seemed oblivious of their past predicament. “I made sure the rats went back to the sewers,” he remarked, more for himself than River. “And Surus the elephant was very obliging about the wait.”

River was dusting off his trousers and hers, barely noticing his forlorn look for the discarded bicycles.

“ _No_ , not the bikes, Doctor,” she warned him. “We already have tons of them in storage, believe me.”

He wrinkled his face with deception while she continued. ”Anyway, wouldn’t it have been easier to pick _me_ up with the TARDIS rather than an _elephant_? It’s a bit… elaborate for a _hit-and-run_ rescue mission; you could have run into _you_.”

“Maybe. You tell me.” He shrugged, tapped his sonic pocket and, brightening, tugged at his lapels. “I said we would go and meet him in ten minutes to take him home. Is this okay with you? I stopped and bought blue tulips, _pure blue_.” He fished out of the pocket four tulips, bright blue, impossible, impertinent. She froze, at loss for words, and his grin grew tenfold.

Childlike, he enjoyed stupefying her senses more than anything. At least, he had waited until the danger had passed to do so, this time. The tip of his nose and the crest of his lips glistened as the wind chased clouds above and she felt the impossibility of her task; move again, let go of him, at some point, again and again and ever. Leave the docks and their coarse stone. And this moment when she rested assured he was the same man she had run with, an hour or so before. Slowly, she came to her senses and brought her hand up his arm, fluttering, before reaching for the soft opal petals.

“No, you never stop.” She shook her head, moved. He placed the bouquet in her hands, folding his behind his back. She breathed. “And blue tulips don’t exist.” 

“It does now.” He looked at her intently, holding her gaze. He stretched his arms and flung them around her shoulders, leading her to a grey alley, parking place to the TARDIS. “Have I told you about my great friend Billy Beal? Well, I say friend, apprentice is more like it.”

She strode along, head bent, caressing the flowers, barely paying attention.

“Of course,” she laughed, looking ahead at the bright ship. ”You are specialised in hybridisation.”

“Why do you think there is a tulip called ‘Flyer’, and ‘Vincent Van Gogh’?” He opened the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers and blocked her, arm across the doorway, murmuring. “And Melody?”

She studied his face, grateful, and lowered her eyes, while pushing him to step into the ship.

“Seriously?” She teased, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, tacitly letting her fly. He followed her to the console, observing her gestures with great care. She hovered above the buttons, reading the coordinates pre-entered for the elephant free ride, the tulips in her left hand waving as she worked. With a thrust of the hips, he pushed a lever and out of the console sprouted a recipient vaguely looking like a vase. They exchanged an amused look, recalling the story behind the particular artefact. She cautiously arranged the flowers in the vase under his gaze, drawn to her fingers, from the petals to the command, in an ever flowing motion. The ship was wheezing in flight, taking her time to reach their destination, only a few streets away.

“I named this one ’You watch us run’.” He was leaning against the panels, eyes fleeing to the ceiling. “What do you think?”

The doors quivered with forceful knocks and an inquisitive trumpeting rung outside.

 

***

 

After dropping Surus back to the Basel zoo, he invited her to the Topkapi Palace, right in the middle of the Tulip Era, at the time of Sultan Ahmed III legendary parties in honour of his favourite flower.

Constantinople was sizzling with beauty in the spring, the full moon shining bright on the perfumed alleys and rooms. Crystalline vases were bursting with prized and rare specimens of tulips all over the palace. The lights were casting stupefying blazes on the delicate arabesques adorning the walls; colours were blossoming on cheeks and chest; the _bashlyks_ and silks of peerless craftsmanship dancing between rooms. The gardens thriving and luscious, the scents of _baklavas_ , liquors, perfumes and flowers gaging the senses. River and the Doctor remained breathless, swept away, humbled against each other; it was History breathing in the wake of legend. Such ostentatious opulence would cost his head to the Sultan.

“I wonder where it all comes from.” The Doctor waved at the flowers, more numerous than the guests.

River was clinging to his shoulder, trying to spot the Sultan, against the moving crowd.

“I think his dad reintroduced them to the Empire. But Ahmed was the one going mad with the flowers. I don’t know why. They have been cultivated for centuries there.” She lifted her eyebrows, pondering. ”It must have held some kind of magical signification for him. He _revered_ them.”

They were swirled between the rumble of conversation and laughter, into a vast hall filled with the sound of _neys_ , _tamburs_ and _kanuns._ While the Doctor was immersed in a game of “let’s not reveal we are not from the future let alone space” with a Persian astronomer, River was trying her best to overcome the TARDIS’ translation and enjoy on her own the beauty of the Ottoman Turkish language. Her expression must have been a sight, as the Doctor pulled a face at her and asked her not to create a new religion. She blinked hard, startled when she took note the astronomer’s curious expression. 

“What did you say your wife’s name was?”

At some point, two guests were trying to woo River at once, while the Doctor was struggling with a caged bird of stunning feathers. He had accidentally ejected his half-eaten pastry in the cage and was attempting to convince the bird to push the delicacy in his direction, because he had no desire to chase to the other end of the palace the domestic in charge of the particular pastry. River introduced her husband to the pestering administrators in an attempt to get rid of them, only managed to be invited to another party -hunting. The Doctor was not amused.

“How so, since when do I have a face calling out ‘Hunt me!’ to people? No offense, dear.”

“None taken. Sweetie, that’s not what he meant by hunting party.”

She was gifted with an extravagantly beautiful and onerous veil in exchange for a lock of her hair.

He picked up a fight with a war chief and resolved the conflict by inventing an early form of _Lokums_ , and with a wheel. He dared to name the sweets ‘Marshmallow toffee _à la_ Doctor’ and the war chief asked him if he was Chinese.

They would burst out of laughter at times, each room of the palace providing them with reasons to feel underdressed in their rather plain, traditional Turkish clothes. They hid behind pilasters and guests, starting conversations from under tables, accidentally tickled to tears the Sultan and eventually caught the attention of the eunuchs guarding the palace. They retreated in the gardens after having nicked a plate of delicacies.

The night was cold, lit with stars and lanterns hung high in the trees. The earth had released its rainy scent of darkness and grass, competing with the light fragrance of tulips, sweetened, gilded, honeyed by the long evening in the vases and the burning lights all around. The gardens opened wide and low before them, spacious, well-maintained. Little of it could identify them as oriental. Yet, only by turning the head, they would behold a breathing, living picture of Persian dream and Ottoman refinement.

They ran through the alleys, hand in hand, losing their pursuers between the wandering guests, and, cackling, huddled behind an impressive arrangement of tulips privy to their escape. Toppled over the grass, they lay silent to ensure of the remoteness of the spot. A couple of guests were idly walking by, but the gardens were not lit everywhere and the trees, in full bloom, concealed River and the Doctor perfectly. They settled on the stone edge of the alley, displaying beside them on the fresh grass, the glistening loot.

The Doctor stretched fully on the ground, his simple, dark Turkish costume, revealing an inch of creamy, light-catching skin. Lids half-closed, lips parted, he exhaled loudly, as if releasing the oriental, dreamy atmosphere of the palace, and letting the simpler, impromptu moment rooting in his chest. He looked rather sultry, hair unruly, his face a paragon of idle youth in its languor. Extending a hand to pick a sweet ever so often, he had the semblance of a statue, artfully laid to rest between the vegetation. She lay down by his side, resting on his open arm and let him feed her. Her mouth opened, silent, and he dropped the sweet, collecting the sugar on her lips with a flick of the thumb. He rolled her onto his chest and she hummed, contented, settling for a trade in kisses and sweets.

The lonely chord of a _zither_ was rocking the air to a suspended breeze, even quieting the laughter and noise coming from the palace. The Doctor and River would hover soundlessly over each other’s face, tempting the other’s lips, then stilling and feeling the disjointed drumming of their hearts, skin deep. Between bites of sweets and kisses, the Doctor would pick petals and place them in River’s loose hair. Soon, she was covered in them, down to her anachronistic corsage. The multi-coloured lumps would cascade down to his face, white and smooth. Gingerly, she lifted the petals to cover his eyes and lips, closed. She repressed a shudder at the funeral sight, brushed the petal off his lips and captured them, delicately.

She was a widow of many deaths, his, always. And a resting place, she never could offer him, not by her side anyway. She had erected his memory, like headstones, across time and space, on cliffs and artefacts. She was mourning him, eternally. His faces and words, all of them. His hurting her and loving her, in equal measures. He lived, for her, in the moments his lips were cursing her and his hands brushing her hips. She breathed life into a legend, carefully researched on university benches, between sheets of crumbling paper, within whispers and inventories.

As in Berlin, his eyes fluttered open, he breathed in sharply; the cool air tangling in warm breaths, tumbling to a point of extreme attraction, she felt, between their mouths. He was staring at her, obviously uncomfortable, she straightened up, squinting.

“What?”

“Dear, could we please take it somewhere a little quieter? I just heard an awful joke about the Sultan’s concubines. And I don’t even think he was joking.”

River raised her eyes to Heaven and tumbled off him with a grunt, avoiding just so the remains of their feast. He looked up to her face, miffed, and, from his lying position, snatched her hand as she was getting up, forcing her to glance down.

“Just,” he gesticulated at the Palace behind. “Let’s take it somewhere else.”

Looking around, she pulled him to his feet and they both raced each other to the TARDIS, long the ramparts. No sooner had they stumbled back into the TARDIS than River leaped at the Doctor’s neck, crushing him into the console. He let out a surprised cry, soon growing into a full blown chortle. As she began nipping at his lower lip, something snapped behind them and she caught a glance of his hands flailing backwards to seize a lever. She tugged at him violently against her and kissed his pouty lips open. He was forgetting whatever was happening with the TARDIS’ command, giving in completely, when a vigorous knocking interrupted them. They broke apart, alarmed, looking at each other, before sceptically lowering their gaze to the trembling doors.

“Do you think we should…” River trailed off, not letting go of him.

“If we ignore that, I don’t know what will happen and I hate not knowing what will happen. It’s usually dangerous. If I take off now, we will kill whatever is on the door step.”

“I thought we hadn’t leave the Empire,” she whispered, peeved.

“We did not”. His nostrils looked positively puzzled in their twitching.

“Did you forget to cloak her?” She stepped back, releasing his face and bringing her hands to her hips. ”Did you forget _how_ to cloak her? Sweetie, I am not going back _again_ to the storeroom because you accidentally cloaked the toaster instead and cannot find it.”

The banging rung out, more insistent this time. The Doctor shushed River, waving his hands in her face. He tiptoed to the screen, carefully typing to obtain an answer. The answer lit his face and his mouth contorted in an eight-shape pout.

“We did not move, not from a light-year, mile or foot.” She folded her arm on her chest, bemused. “We are still in Turkey, well, the Empire,” he murmured, pointing at the ground, before hopping back to her side. “Still in Constantinople. Still in the gardens.”

He scratched his head, seemed to be about to grab his sonic, turned to the console, then back to the door. River rolled her eyes and bounced to the doors she opened wide.

Outside the doors, in broad daylight, in the middle of the very same Topkapi gardens River and the Doctor had not left minutes ago, stood a very confused man in magnificent attire. Turbaned and portly, noble and fierce, bearing a slight resemblance to Ahmed III; probably the Sultan.  His wits recovered, he began scoffing and pestering and spitting questions about their blue wooden box appearing  in the middle of his _guarded_ palace. The Doctor was uselessly gaping at him, sonic half out of his pocket, not knowing exactly what to do in case of an encounter with a random Sultan ranting about the wrong shade of blue the new piece of furniture was and how those slaves in preposterous clothes should be wiped for their disobedience. River was considering simply knocking him out and taking off without an explanation when the Sultan suddenly stopped shouting and pointed at her head.

“What are you doing with tulips on your head, my child? I haven’t seen any in ages.”

River and the Doctor looked at each other, bewildered. They had completely forgotten River’s unusual headdress, of many tulips and colours. They spent the next half hour discussing with the Sultan Mehmet IV, Ahmed’s father, as it was, the merit of the tulip, a most ancient flower in his land.

The Sultan had simply forgotten how charming the flowers were.

When they stepped back into the TARDIS, the Sultan going out on one of his hunts, leaving them under his guards’ watch and the assurance he really should acquire more of these flowers, they collapsed on the floor with laughter.

 “Did we just unwittingly launch the Tulip craze?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You might want to learn a little more about:
> 
>  
> 
> [The Tulip Era](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_period)
> 
>  
> 
> [Fausto Coppi](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fausto_Coppi)
> 
>  
> 
> [William James Beal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Beal)
> 
>  
> 
> [Turkish traditional clothing](http://www.turkishculture.org/fabrics-and-patterns/clothing-593.htm)


End file.
